Die Antwoord – review

Tuesday 16 November 2010 17.40 EST
First published on Tuesday 16 November 2010 17.40 EST

If Die Antwoord are a joke, they're a painfully acute one. This over-the-top South African rap-rave trio, comprising rappers Ninja and Yolandi Visser and a hulking DJ called Hi-Tek, purport to represent "zef", a strain of working-class/underclass Boer culture that perhaps most closely equates to our own pejorative term "chav".

The band's co-founder and frontman, Watkin Tudor Jones, aka Ninja, has previously appeared in a host of similar conceptual art-rap projects and situationist pranks. None have travelled outside of his homeland, but this year the release of the shock-horror video for Die Antwoord's first single, Enter the Ninja, has attracted more than eight million views on YouTube.

The joke has grown, and the Scala is rammed with cognoscenti who are in on the trio's ironic vulgarian shtick. They have plenty to gawp at.

As Hi-Tek glowers behind the decks in a cowl and horror mask, the gangling Ninja bares his torso and a riot of (possibly temporary) tattoos, while his tiny sidekick Visser, squeaking from her romper suit, resembles a hyperactive toddler on a sugar rush. They rap in both English and Afrikaans about getting wasted, getting laid and their own dumb magnificence. The songs are cartoon rants punctuated with guttural expletives. The bubblegum Beat Boy suggests a potty-mouted Aqua, while the staggeringly puerile Fish Paste features a Boer playground chant for a chorus.

As Ninja raps Evil Boy, in which he claims to be "hung like a fokken horse" before a giant pink proboscis emerges from the fly of his Y-fronts, it is clear these arch satirists rank alongside Tenacious D and Goldie Lookin' Chain as a musical joke that may not repay repeated telling. As a one-off experience, however, Die Antwoord are hilarious.

• This article was amended on 17 November 2010. The original described the culture as "zed". This has been corrected.